These Guys Found The Remains Of A 14,000-Year-Old Butchered Mastodon In Their Backyard

Mastodon burgers anyone?

By Mary Beth Griggs

Posted 39 minutes ago

It isn’t every day that you find bones in your backyard, much less a 4-foot long rib bone sticking out of the earth. After that initial, massive find, neighbors Daniel LaPoint Jr. and Eric Witzke kept digging, eventually unearthing 42 massive bones from a property in Bellevue Township, Michigan last November. At first, they thought the bones might have belonged to a dinosaur, but it turns out that the remains were far younger.

“Preliminary examination indicates that the animal may have been butchered by humans,” Daniel Fisher, director of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology told the Lansing State Journal. Fisher examined the bones when LaPoint and Witzke contacted the museum, and eventually determined that in addition to being butchered by humans, the bones belonged to a 37-year-old mastodon (a relative of elephants and mammoths) that lived roughly 14,000 years ago.

The Journal reports that while unusual, finding the bones of mastodons isn’t totally unheard of in Michigan; about 330 sites have been confirmed around the state, two in the past year.

Fossils found on private land in the United States belong to the landowner, not the government, so the fossil finders LaPoint and Witzke are keeping a few of the bones as the coolest mementoes ever and donating the rest to the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology. But before they travelled to the museum, the pair took the bones to a local school, where kids got to experience the fossils up close and personal.

“All the kids got to pick them up and hold them. Some kids, it was life-changing for them. To change one kid’s life because they got to touch it, I think, is an incredible opportunity.” LaPoint told the Lansing State Journal.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory fired James E. Doyle, a respected nuclear security expert, in early July after more than a year of persecution stemming from a scholarly article he had published calling for nuclear disarmament, according to an account published Thursday by the Center for Public Integrity.

The fact that a US government laboratory victimized a researcher for expressing opposition to nuclear weapons, a view shared by the overwhelming majority of the world’s population, testifies to the crisis-ridden character of American foreign policy. In case after case around the world, the US is attempting to shore up its declining supremacy through increasingly reckless and brazen acts of aggression, up to and including stoking conflict with Russia and China, both nuclear powers.

Located in New Mexico, the Los Alamos National Laboratory is a Department of Energy facility that researches and develops nuclear weapons. It is one of the largest research facilities in the world and has an annual budget of over $2 billion. Doyle had worked for 17 years as a contractor in the lab’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Division.

In February 2013, Doyle published a front-page article in Survival, the journal of the UK-based think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Titled “Why Eliminate Nuclear Weapons?”, the piece argued that nuclear deterrence was a “myth” that damaged the ability of world governments to “meet the mutual global challenges of the twenty-first century.”

Doyle’s article dismantles the various official legends surrounding nuclear weapons. He disputes the shopworn assertion that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in World War II saved tens of thousands of lives by precluding an invasion of the Japanese mainland, citing the “emerging view among historians that the entry of the Soviet Union into the Pacific War on 9 August 1945 was more decisive in Japan’s decision to surrender than the threat of further atomic bombings.”

Moreover, Doyle points to the various near-misses during the Cold War, as well as the recklessness of American and Soviet politicians and military leaders during the Cuban missile crisis, as contradicting the theory that nuclear deterrence “induces caution during crises, [making] leaders more risk-adverse.” From this he concludes, “It is clearly unreasonable to assert that evidence supports the claim that nuclear deterrence was the major cause of war-avoidance [in the post-war era]. This assertion is a belief, unsupported by anything approaching a strong, clear body of historically documented evidence.” He ends by appealing to the “international community” to eliminate nuclear weapons by 2045, the 100-year anniversary of the atomic bombings of Japan.

Doyle submitted his article, prepared over months in his spare time, for review by the laboratory’s censors, although he was not required to do so. While his supervisors encouraged him to adopt a more “moderate” stance to avoid hurting the interests of the laboratory, they did not raise any concerns about classified information and did not attempt to prevent him from publishing the article.

Less than a week after publication, however, Doyle’s superiors declared that the article contained classified information. As part of a phony investigation, they demanded that Doyle hand over copies of every article he had ever published.

Demonstrating the politically motivated character of the investigation, Los Alamos’ Chief Classification Officer Daniel Gerth overruled three subordinates who advised him that they had found no classified material in the article. Despite making no effort to remove the article from circulation, which is still freely available on the IISS’s website, security officials at the laboratory demanded access to Doyle’s home computer in order to delete Doyle’s personal copies of the article from his hard drive.

The Laboratory administration suspended Doyle’s security clearance for one month. In addition, they suspended, rather than revoked, Doyle’s access to information on foreign nuclear programs, a method of proceeding that prevented him from appealing their action. Such information was crucial to Doyle’s work as a nuclear nonproliferation expert. Finally, on July 8, 2014, the Laboratory fired him.

There are indications that the campaign against Doyle originated from sections of Congress. The Center for Public Integrity cites Doyle’s former supervisor, Scott Gibbs, as saying that the lab’s government relations office in Washington had told him that Doyle’s article had upset someone on the House Armed Services Committee. Gibbs refused to comment further, and Washington officials contacted by the Center for Public Integrity declined to confirm or deny Gibb’s allegations.

However, the fact that all four of the complaints lodged by Doyle with numerous government agencies were summarily dismissed despite the obviously political character of the case suggests widespread collusion to punish Doyle for his remarks.

Doyle is a solidly establishment figure. Before working 17 years at Los Alamos, he wrote the Department of Energy’s plan for securing nuclear material in Russia in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He is a well-known researcher in nuclear non-proliferation and wrote a textbook on the subject that is used in more than 30 universities around the world. Indeed, his article opposes nuclear proliferation from the standpoint of safeguarding American “national security” and quotes Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.

Yet clearly he is aware of the suicidal implications of contemporary American foreign policy and brought those concerns to the public at large in his article. This was considered a red line by sections of the US security apparatus.

The article clearly touched a nerve in government circles when it declared, “Current US nuclear posture with respect to Russia seems to be completely out of step with declared policy. In 1994, Russia and the United States reached a bilateral de-targeting agreement…but if Russia is not presumed to be a potential adversary, [the] fundamental features of the current US nuclear force structure and operating posture make little sense.” Although he holds back from any conclusions, the evidence Doyle offers makes clear that the real aim of US nuclear policy is maintaining an aggressive war footing, primarily against Russia, with an eye toward asserting its dominance over every area of the globe.

The government is clearly fearful of the examples set by Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Because of the immense dangers involved and the complete lack of any support for these policies among the population, the ruling elite cannot tolerate any dissension in the ranks of the military-industrial complex.

The report is an indictment of the state of American society nearly six years after the onset of the financial crisis in 2008.

A majority of children in Buffalo, New York, the state’s second largest city, live below the federal poverty line, according to the most recent US Census statistics. In 2013, the city’s child poverty rate stood at 50.6 percent, a 5.6 percent increase over the abysmal 45 percent rate in 2012. Buffalo ranks third in the number of children living in poverty, behind Detroit (59 percent) and Cleveland (54 percent): here.

Nearly one in four US children lives in poverty, the highest level in 20 years, with a similar proportion not getting enough food to eat. These were among the findings of an article published last week in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics, entitled Seen but Not Heard: Children and US Federal Policy on Health and Health Care: here.

About a millennium ago, the ancestral Pueblo Indians in the Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico obtained their precious turquoise using a large trade network spanning several states, new research reveals.

In the new study, researchers traced Chaco Canyon turquoise artifacts back to resource areas in Colorado, Nevada and southeastern California. The results definitively show, for the first time, that the ancestral Puebloans — best known for their multistoried adobe houses — in the San Juan Basin area of New Mexico did not get all of their turquoise from a nearby mining site, as was previously believed.

“People usually think of the Chaco Canyon as this big center [for turquoise],” said study lead author Sharon Hull, an anthropologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. “But we show that people were bringing the turquoise back and forth between the western and eastern sites.”

Sourcing turquoise artifacts

Over the years, archaeologists have found more than 200,000 turquoise pieces at various sites in the Chaco Canyon. The gems, which were often embedded into jewelry and figurines, were very important to the Puebloan culture, and akin to modern-day diamonds, Hull told Live Science.

Initially, scientists thought the gems came from the nearest turquoise deposit more than 124 miles (200 kilometers) away — the Cerrillos Hills Mining District near present-day Santa Fe, N.M. But the discovery of other extensively mined turquoise deposits throughout the southwestern United States led some scientists to believe the Chaco residents acquired some of their gems through long-distance trade networks. However, the evidence was mostly circumstantial, as chemical analyses weren’t able to link the artifacts with specific mining sites.

Hull and her colleagues began their study by creating a comparative database, consisting of 800 isotope analyses from 22 resource areas in the western United States and northern Mexico. (Isotopes are atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons.)

“To establish a successful database, you have to find discriminators that have less variation within a mine than between mines,” Hull said. “Copper isotopes don’t work and hydrogen isotopes don’t work. But between the two, you have an isotope overlap that is pretty distinct for each resource.” If the copper-to-hydrogen isotope ratio for a turquoise artifact matches the distinctive ratio of a mine, it would mean the artifact came from that specific turquoise deposit.

Next, the team analyzed the ratios of copper to hydrogen isotopes of 74 turquoise artifacts from Puebloan sites in the San Juan Basin, southern Utah and the Moapa Valley in Nevada. After comparing the artifacts’ isotope ratios with those of the turquoise mines, they were able to accurately identify the geological source of 42 artifacts.

The researchers expect to be able to source the rest of the artifacts as they add more data from other turquoise mines to their database.

A massive trade network

Specifically, the team found that artifacts from the Chaco Canyon came from turquoise deposits in Colorado and New Mexico, as well as resource areas in southwestern California and Nevada. Interestingly, the people from different sites used different turquoise procurement strategies. [In Photos: Archaeology Around the World]

For example, the inhabitants of Pueblo Bonito, the largest great house in the canyon, heavily favored nearby resource areas, while people from some of the smaller Chaco sites got all of their turquoise from deposits in the far west (at least according to the artifacts the researchers could source). This suggests the people of Pueblo Bonito mined the nearby deposits themselves and either monopolized the mines or, more likely, had unique knowledge about the deposit locations.

“The last time I went to Cerrillos Hills, we had to walk quite a ways to get to it,” Hull said. “I remember thinking that if you didn’t know where this place was, you just wouldn’t be able to find it.”

The team saw similar turquoise procurement patterns for other Puebloan sites in the San Juan Basin area — the people of Aztec Ruin got much of their turquois from nearby deposits, whereas the inhabitants of Salmon Ruin sought out turquoise from the west. Additionally, they found the Puebloans in Eagle’s Watch in southern Utah and the Moapa Valley in southern Nevada procured their turquoise from deposits both near and far.

The team is now looking to further map the movement of the blue-green mineral across the southwestern United States, in hopes of learning more about the individual groups that coveted turquoise and were involved in the massive trade network. They also want to use their new technique to investigate the geological source of turquoise artifacts in other countries, such as Mexico, Chile and Argentina.

The study will be published in May in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Isolated teeth are the primary evidence for understanding the diversity and evolution of small-bodied theropod dinosaurs during the Late Cretaceous, but few such specimens have been well documented from outside of the northern Rockies, making it difficult to assess Late Cretaceous dinosaur diversity and biogeographic patterns.

We describe small theropod teeth from the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico. These specimens were collected from strata spanning Santonian – Maastrichtian. We grouped isolated theropod teeth into several morphotypes, which we assigned to higher-level theropod clades based on possession of phylogenetic synapomorphies. We then used principal components analysis and discriminant function analyses to gauge whether the San Juan Basin teeth overlap with, or are quantitatively distinct from, similar tooth morphotypes from other geographic areas.

The San Juan Basin contains a diverse record of small theropods. Late Campanian assemblages differ from approximately co-eval assemblages of the northern Rockies in being less diverse with only rare representatives of troodontids and a Dromaeosaurus-like taxon. We also provide evidence that erect and recurved morphs of a Richardoestesia-like taxon represent a single heterodont species.

A late Maastrichtian assemblage is dominated by a distinct troodontid. The differences between northern and southern faunas based on isolated theropod teeth provide evidence for provinciality in the late Campanian and the late Maastrichtian of North America. However, there is no indication that major components of small-bodied theropod diversity were lost during the Maastrichtian in New Mexico. The same pattern [is] seen in northern faunas, which may provide evidence for an abrupt dinosaur extinction.

This is a video of Aplomado Falcons that have been reintroduced in south-eastern New Mexico. This is an educational video to familiarize people with the movements of the falcons and the type of preferred habitat. The recovery project is a group effort involving the US Fish and Wildlife Service, The Peregrine Fund, Turner Endangered Species Fund and other organizations.

Aplomado Falcons were once widespread residents of the American Southwest, but by the 1950s, they’d disappeared entirely from the region. Loss of habitat, loss of prey, and pesticides all played a role.

But in the 1980s, a group called The Peregrine Fund began breeding captive Aplomado Falcons. Over the next 25 years, 1,500 fledglings were set free in South Texas. At the same time, conservation pacts with private landowners provided more than two million acres of habitat. Learn more in Related Resources below.

The number of children living in families with incomes below the official poverty level rose to 16.4 million in 2011, according to the annual Kids Count report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation released this month. This is an increase of one full percentage point in one year, up to 23 percent from 22 percent (15.7 million) in 2010. More than one in four children under five—26 percent—were officially poor in 2011.

The increase of 700,000 children in poverty in the US between 2010 and 2011 was almost as high as the one million increase the year before.

Data from the foundation’s report last year indicated child poverty had already soared upward by nearly 30 percent from 2000 to 2010. The number of children living in poverty in the US went up by 4.2 million between 2000 and 2011.

“Kids Count Databook 2013” compares the change in several factors of child well being between 2005 and 2011 in order to compare pre- and post-Great Recession measures. Between 2005 and 2011 child poverty increased by 3 million children.

The official poverty level of $22,811 for a family of two adults and two children leaves out nearly half the families that suffer from deprivation. According to the foundation: “families need an income of roughly twice the official poverty level to meet their basic needs, including housing, food, transportation, health care and child care.” Nearly half of all children, 45 percent, live in low-income families that earn less than twice the poverty threshold.

Recent Census data shows that 48.5 million people, 16% of the population, are living in poverty: here.